MTA Bus Time Technology
MTA Bus Time integrates several proven technologies to bring real-time information to its riders.
The two main parts of the MTA Bus Time system are the on-bus hardware and the MTA Bus Time server. Each of these was tailored to the project's needs and to meet the MTA's strategic technology goals. The simplest way to sum up those goals is "Open."
The MTA BusTime system is open to external developers to create their own real-time bus applications using the Bus Time data feed. If you would like to learn more about developing applications using Bus Time, read more about the MTA Bus Time Developer API.
It is also open internally in the integration of the different technology components. This gives us flexibility as to who supplies the on-board hardware (which reports each bus's position), who maintains and improves the MTA BusTime server (which puts all the information together and responds to users' requests), and what other features the system can support in the future.
The On-Bus Hardware
The on-bus hardware has gone through multiple generations and suppliers. For the pilot on the B63 route (2011) and the retrofits to Staten Island and the Bronx (2012), the MTA partnered with VeriFone Inc. For the 2013 retrofits to the other boroughs the MTA partnered with Cubic Transportation Inc. Beginning in 2018, for new buses, the MTA designed and implemented its own version. Each solution used open standards implemented by Commercially available Off-The Shelf (COTS) products to transmit the data, initially over Verizon's 3G, and later its 4G wireless data network.
To report the bus's location, each version of the hardware includes an enhanced GPS device with "dead reckoning" to compensate for lost or corrupted GPS signals in New York's "urban canyons."
What happens on each bus is simple - at regular intervals, the hardware reports the bus’s location and external destination sign information to the MTA Bus Time server in an open-standard format. Until 2025, the reporting rate has been every 30 seconds. In 2025 we are increasing it to between every 5 and 15 seconds.
The MTA Bus Time Server
This is where the magic happens. All the complexity of sorting through thousands of buses resides on the server. It is this simplicity of design for the on-bus hardware that sets MTA Bus Time apart from other real-time bus tracking and customer information systems.
The server receives the information from each bus in the fleet and integrates it with map, route, and schedule data, along with previous updates. It then applies sophisticated inferential algorithms to determine whether the bus is in or out of service, what route it is serving (if any), and its direction of service. From these inferences, it then determines what stops that bus is going to make, how far the bus is from each stop, and predicts the bus’s time of arrival at each downstream stop.
The server then makes this information available to users in a number of different ways: via a desktop web map, a mobile web site , and via SMS on all mobile phones. It also provides an API for developers to create their own applications and interfaces to use the Bus Time data.
MTA Bus Time Software
The MTA Bus Time server is powered by the OneBusAway open-source software package. This software was originally developed to aggregate real-time information from multiple bus and ferry operators in the Seattle area and make it available to Seattle's transit users via a range of internet and mobile interfaces.
OneBusAway uses as its baseline information transit schedules published in the GTFS format, which the MTA is already publishing for all of its bus and rail services.
Since OneBusAway is Open-Source software, the MTA is able to use it free of charge. Bus Time required a number of improvements and customizations to OneBusAway, as well and numerous improvements and upgrades since, for which the MTA partnered with Cambridge Systematics . These improvements have been contributed back to the open source for the OneBusAway project and are now publicly available and free for any other developer or transit agency to use.
